Reavis Lecture speaker focuses on importance of play, rest for spiritual health

September 26, 2024

A game of Simon Says. Creative time with Play-Doh. A video on the history and cultural significance of double dutch jump roping.

The Rev. Dr. Lakisha R. Lockhart's two lectures in Butler Chapel on Tuesday - this year's Campbell University Divinity School series funded by the L.B. and Mabel Reavis Professorship and Scholarship Program - were looser and likely included more "play time" than lectures past.

But for Lockhart, an author and assistant professor of Christian education at Union Presbyterian Seminary, that's the point. Wearing a shirt with the words "Stop Rescheduling Joy," Lockhart spoke of the "womanist pedagogy of play" during her second lecture on Tuesday and encouraged her audience to make more time for play and rest to improve their mental and spiritual health and well-being.

"We need to make more space for play and rest in what we are already doing," said Lockhart. "It'll help make the work we do more impactful and definitely more meaningful. That means setting aside actual days where you rest and you're intentional about it. It means more sabbaticals. I find that it's an embodied aesthetic experience and a cultural expression that are part of what it is to be human. And it's very biblical."

[Link]

Lockhart is co-editor of the book Theopoetics in Color: Embodied Approaches in Theological Discourse and has two publications forthcoming in early 2025, including Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play, which served as the subject of her second lecture. She used double dutch jump roping - the game using two ropes jumped by one or more players simultaneously, which reached its modern form in predominantly black urban areas such as Harlem in the 1950s - as a metaphor for both the importance of play and learning more about the world and other cultures (not just sticking to one rope).

"[We're all different] and there shouldn't be one rope we're all expected to jump," she said. "I have different needs. My body's different. What if the rope is too tall or too short? What happens is you get hurt trying to jump a rope that was never meant for you."

A self-described "womanist," Lockhart speaks all over the country about the power of play, movement, aesthetics and creative arts in life and in theology, using the body as a point for theological reflection. She received her degree in philosophy and religion from Claflin University, her Master of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary, her Master in Ethics and Society from Vanderbilt University and her Ph.D. in Theology and Education from Boston College.

The Reavis Lectures are made possible by the L.B. and Mabel Reavis Professorship and Scholarship Program founded in 1991. Funding from the program is used to invite distinguished scholars to teach in the fields of evangelism and church growth. For the past 20-plus years, the program has featured many Christian leaders on a variety of topics and has fulfilled the vision of the Reavis family.

On Oct. 29, Campbell Divinity will host its Prevatte Lectures, featuring the Rev. Dr. Matthew Schlimm, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church whose research interests focus on biblical theory and ethics. His lectures, "Genesis and the Difficulty of Being Human" and "What Does Genesis Say about Violence?" will be held in Butler Chapel at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. that day.

Contributors

Faith & InquiryResearch & ImpactDivinity